Chris Holmes Online

In early 2004 Atari released a Troika game called The Temple of Elemental Evil. It was subtitled as “A Classic Greyhawk Adventure.” Originally, The Temple of Elemental Evil (abbreviated as TOEE) was a module, released in 1985, for the pencil and paper Dugeons & Dragons game. Fans of the pencil and paper version of D&D always loved the TOEE module, and hoped it would one day be reincarnated as a video game, especially given the success of certain roleplaying computer games like the Baldur’s Gate series.

The catch in all of this was that many pencil and paper roleplayers often disliked the way computer games translated the D&D universe.

Video games are a different animal than traditional pencil and paper roleplaying games. P&P games were designed to be played at a table, with friends, and often involved long nights, lots of pizza and Mountain Dew. D&D in the pencil and paper era was as much a social event (if not more) as it was a game.

Video games changed all of that. Baldur’s Gate, and it’s wildly successful sequel, Baldur’s Gate 2, were single-player games. The social aspect of D&D was dropped and computerization took over. The result was a mixed bag. While Baldur’s Gate was a really fun video game (and one of my favorites as well), it was not what many old school players considered as true D&D. The biggest complaint from D&D fans was that the combat happend in real-time, as opposed to the turn-based nature of a P&P game. Yet, because of the success of games like Baldur’s Gate, nearly every other roleplaying game to hit the PC has utilized a real-time combat engine.

Enter Troika and The Temple of Elemental Evil. The developers for TOEE decided that it was time for a computer roleplaying game to finally deliver a product that emulated the pencil and paper experience. Combat in TOEE is turn-based, and as much as possible, every single rule and detail in the Dungeons and Dragons handbook was coded into the TOEE engine.

There was just one problem. Atari wanted to publish the game too quickly, and it flat-out was not ready. With their feet held to the fire, Troika pushed the game out the door in an unfinished state. What resulted was one of the worst game publishing nightmares of all time. TOEE was one of the most bug-ridden pieces of software ever to hit store shelves.

Fans who had waited for a turn-based Dungeons and Dragons game were at once elated, and then mortified. The game had the mechanics correct; it was a thing of beauty from a purist point of view. But it was littered with so many bugs, flaws and glitches that it was virtually unplayable, even after several patches from Atari. The Temple Of Elemental Evil looked like it could have been one of the greatest roleplaying games of all time, but a poor decision to publish it before it was ready killed the potential for the game.

But the story isn’t over.

Just when things looked grim, the Circle of Eight showed up, a group of fans with coding and hacking skills and a passion for Atari’s butchered game. They loved the game so much, and realize it had so much potential, that they spent their free time trying to reverse engineer and demystify the TOEE game engine. They worked tirelessly to modify it, and in the process turn a turd of a game into something worthy of every D&D fan’s PC gaming shelf.

The end result? This past July the Circle of Eight released their final patch to update The Temple of Elemental Evil. While they weren’t able to fix every bug (you can only tweak things so far without access to the source code) they did a fine job of modifying the game and bringing it out of the deep hole that Atari had cast it into.

I just finished playing through the game with the Circle of Eight’s final patch, and the improvements are amazing.

For the longest time I’ve considered the Baldur’s Gate series of games to be the best Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying games ever made for the PC. And in terms of story and character they still are. But The Temple Of Elemental Evil is the only game I’ve ever played that gets the turn-based combat engine correct. It is perfect in every way.

I know in our fast-paced, reward-me-now, instant-gratification society, turn-based combat isn’t as popular or stylish as real-time combat. But after playing through The Temple of Elemental Evil with the Circle of Eight patch, I can honestly say I prefer roleplaying games, at least in the Dungeons and Dragons universe, to utilize a turn-based combat system. It saddens me a bit to know that future games (for instance, the upcoming Neverwinter Nights 2) will not be utilizing a turn-based engine for combat.

My hope is that somewhere a roleplaying developer gets a chance to play this patched version of The Temple of Elemental Evil. In fact, every developer working on a roleplaying game for the PC ought to play this game. At least see how it feels. It’s a totally different experience.

Which brings me to my last point. In the latest issue of PC Gamer Magazine, one of their columnists wrote an article about (paraphrasing the exact title here) “Five things the developers of Fallout 3 can do so it doesn’t suck.” He had some basic, common-sense advice for the developers of Fallout 3. But nowhere in the five suggestions did he mention turn-based combat.

So, let me do it. Fallout, and it’s sequel, Fallout 2, are generally regarded as some of the best Roleplaying Games to ever hit the PC screen. And those games exclusively used a turn-based combat system. Due largely to this design decision, the Fallout games provided a much more strategic and rich combat experience.

Please, whoever you are, whoever is responsible for developing Fallout 3, strongly consider utilizing a turn-based combat engine. Moreover, please take a look at the way The Temple Of Elemental Evil handles things like Area of Effect and in-combat distance.

It would be a shame if the maligned, patched version of Atari’s game is the last, good turn-based game we PC gamers ever see…